(Translation unedited by authors.)1
Although this is evidence of the success of DUNTON it does not represent Kesselring’s views quite correctly. On May 3, for instance, he had attended an important exercise held to test the arrangements to repel a landing at Civitavecchia in which the 29th Panzer Grenadier and the 92nd Infantry Divisions took part but was reluctant to move the 29th to the Tenth Army front for some time after DIADEM had been launched. Kesselring, like his army commanders and staff, suffered from lack of information and so was reduced to deducing a possible point of attack by imagined similarities between the exercise area and the point threatened. He was also influenced by purely fortuitous events, such as a sudden surge of traffic detected by German observers on the roads in the Adriatic sector, or an unusual concentration of shipping in Bari harbour. In his own mind, he was certain of only one thing: that when the long-expected Allied offensive was launched, the attacks on the Tenth and Fourteenth Armies would be no more than a feint to draw his reserves away from the area chosen for an amphibious attack designed to outflank the whole Gustav defence system.
As late as May 10 orders went out from C-in-C South-West to complete the reorganisation of Tenth Army’s front.
The 14th Corps became responsible only for the front from Terracina to the Liri river; the 94th Infantry Division on the right and the reinforced 71st Division on the left, with a depleted 15th Panzer Grenadier Division acting as corps reserve and watching the coast behind the right of the 94th Division. General Lemelsen, temporarily in command, was to be attacked by two US divisions in the 2nd Corps on the sector occupied by the 94th, while four divisions and 7,000 irregular mountain troops of the French Expeditionary Corps were about to fall on the 71st Division. (This alteration displeased von Senger greatly when he returned from an enforced holiday in Germany to meet Hitler and receive a decoration, for he believed that the Montecassino–Garigliano sector should be treated as a single tactical entity, where his corps reserves and his artillery could be concentrated on any threatened point.)
The 51st Mountain Corps (General der Gebirgetruppen Valentin Feuerstein), took over the northern half of the Liri valley to a point north of the central massif whose southern escarpment from the Monastery to Piedimonte glowered down Highway No. 6 (the Via Casilina) and the road to Rome. Its four divisions were disposed from right to left as follows: the grandiosely named 44th Reichsgrenadier-division Hoch und Deutschmeister2 from the left bank of the Liri to a point one mile south of the Via Casilina; the indomitable infantry of Heidrich’s 1st Parachute Division from there to the heights above the Monastery, the 5th Mountain Division on Heidrich’s left and then the 114th Jaeger Division up as far as the junction point with Group Haucke. Group Haucke (an ad hoc corps), the 334th and the depleted 305 Infantry Divisions extended von Vietinghoff’s left to the Adriatic where it faced the British 5th Corps, with only the 4th and 10th Indian Infantry Divisions in a holding role.
The outcome of the terrific battle that was about to take place between the 51st Corps and the Eighth Army was to be decided by a fatal divergence in opinion between two opposing commanders, whose analyses of the situation were, of course, completely unknown to each other. Harding, as we know, had concluded that the one sector where the 1,000 tanks and 1,000 guns of the Eighth Army could be used to the best effect was the Liri valley. Von Vietinghoff came to the opposite conclusion. He did not believe that the Allies would attempt another disastrous river crossing, but instead they would choose the Monastery heights as their Schwerpunkt, as he who held the heights held the valley. He was to be proved wrong. In consequence the Liri sector of the Gustav Line was held by a hotch-potch of units, some good, some inferior.
Cassino town was held by two under-strength parachute battalions, contained by the infantry of the British 6th Armoured Division, whose tanks were placed under command of the 4th Division for the assault on the Gustav Line. From Cassino to a point one mile south of the Via Casilina the front was held by the machine-gun battalion of the 1st Parachute Division. Between it and the left bank of the Liri the line was the responsibility of the 44th Division, but Ortner, its commander, had been ordered to surrender all his infantry and his reconnaissance battalion. Two of his regiments were detached to stiffen up the defence of the heights, and the other with the reconnaissance battalion to reinforce the 71st Division in the 14th Corps. In their place he was given a battalion of panzer grenadiers reinforced with part of another from the 115th Regiment of the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division, in 14th Corps, which he placed on his left next to the parachute machine-gunners. To their right he placed an ad hoc “blocking force” under a Colonel Bode (Sperrgruppe Bode)* consisting of two battalions from the 576th Grenadier Regiment, part of the low-category 305th Infantry Division in Group Haucke, and the other part of the 3rd Battalion, the 115th Panzer Grenadiers. The German Army was renowned for the ease and flexibility with which strange units could cooperate with each other in battle-groups, but this dispersal of a perfectly good division and robbing other corps to make it good was contrary to accepted German staff practice. These battalions, though in very strong and well-sited defences and supported by mortars and artillery, were to face an assault by two divisions deploying four brigades in the initial wave supported by 200 tanks and the main weight of the Eighth Army’s artillery.
General Feuerstein was an experienced officer, sixty years old, who had only recently taken command of the 51st Corps, and though he had no inkling of what was about to hit him, or when, did not like any of these arrangements. They went against all his training. It is not too much to assume that a German commander of his generation might have in mind the surprise withdrawal of the German Army to the Hindenburg Line on the Western Front which completely dislocated the offensive planned by the French General Nivelle and had such momentous consequences. When Kesselring visited his HQ on May 10 Feuerstein suggested a withdrawal to the Hitler Line, at present unmanned. This, he argued, would be a shorter line to defend and he could create a reserve from his own resources, which at the moment was totally lacking. Kesselring refused, on the ground that it would be contrary to the Fuehrer’s strictest orders, that no position was to be abandoned without a fight to the bitter end, but his decision might also have been influenced by his conviction that the main blow would not fall on Feuerstein’s front.
It is instructive for the student of war to observe how, in this operation, generals of varying ability and widely different characters became the victims of what, in some, amounted to obsessions. Apart from Kesselring, General Alphonse Juin was convinced (with some justification) that the only way to break through the Gustav Line was along the least likely approach. The previous French experience in the mountains above Cassino had persuaded him of the folly of attacking bille en tête — bashing a brick wall down with one’s head — a view shared by Anders, who had secret doubts when he was ordered to attack on that terrible battlefield, though he loyally accepted the task assigned to him. Harding was as orthodox as a German or Russian, and applied the principle of concentration, pure and undiluted. Alexander was the victim of the delusion he had created for himself, that he could only coax and cajole but never command. Clark was obsessed with the capture of Rome, come what may.
What the critics of Harding’s plan did not understand, and von Senger and now Feuerstein did, was that in modern warfare it was not concentration of numbers that counted so much as concentration of fire-power by land and air – tanks, guns and bombers. Had Feuerstein been allowed to shorten his line he would have been able to concentrate the fire of his relatively few guns, and had the withdrawal he suggested been carried out without giving the game away, the Eighth Army’s opening bombardment would have hit nothing but a few outposts, the whole ponderous mass of cannon would have had to be moved forward to within range of the Hider Line and all Frank Siggers’ careful preparations would have been wasted.
The Allied Intelligence and Counter-Battery staffs had correctly estimated the strength and location of the
German artillery, as shown in the table opposite, totalling 385 pieces, faced by 1,050 on the Eighth Army sector, 400 on the CEF and approximately 200 with the US 2nd Corps.3
If the reader is to follow Leese’s development of his operations in the Liri valley he must grasp the significance of this preponderance of the Allied artillery, and also its potential. Effective artillery fire was possible in darkness or bad weather, and its response time to calls for support measured in minutes not hours.* Furthermore, the narrowness of the Liri front, though it inhibited manoeuvre, was a positive advantage when it came to concentrating the whole weight of the artillery on the front of one attacking division or the other.
The Eighth Army’s part in DIADEM was code-named HONKER, which presented no difficulty in interpretation to officers who served in India and who had hunted big game. The verb “to honk” is slang, derived from the Urdu hankna, to drive game, but not in the sedate manner used to bring partridges or pheasants up to a line of guns in the English countryside. It was the sport of the Mughal emperors, who used their troops to beat out game in the huge battues they enjoyed, using the powerful Turkish bow on the then immensely rich fauna of India: rhinoceros, tigers, leopards and deer of every kind. A later generation of rulers, the English, used to “honk” the wild boar out of cover and ride them down armed only with à six-foot spear, but the acme of the art was to start an often very angry tiger out of the jungle and bring him to a hunter perched in a tree who, if he only wounded it, was in honour bound to climb down, follow the blood trail and finish it off on foot. The Eighth Army staff had met the formidable German soldiers too often to choose a punning or allusive code-name in a spirit of arrogance or frivolity. If the officer who chose it had in mind that the object was to drive the Tenth Army on to the muzzles of the tank guns and artillery of the US 6th Corps when it emerged from Anzio it was entirely appropriate. Officially code-words were intended to conceal rather than hint at the purpose or nature of an operation, but recondite as the choice was it is a clue to the thinking of HQ Eighth Army.4
_____________
German Artillery facing or able to intervene on the Eighth Army front
(Source, Lecture by Brigadier F. S. Siggers, Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Historical Society, Vol. II, No. 5 (January 1969); “heavy”, 170-mm gun or 210-mm howitzer; “medium”, 105-mm gun or 150-mm howitzer; “field”, 105-mm howitzer; “AA”, dual-purpose 88-mm; “RL”, 150-mm five-barrelled rocket-launcher, or Nebelwerfer.)
German Formation facing Allied
Left sector, 51st Corps,
5th Mtn Div. and regt of
44th Div.; 2 heavy, 24 medium
36 field 10th Corps
Centre sector,
1st Para. Div.; 12 medium
25 field, 4 RL 2nd Polish Corps
Right centre sector,
44th Div., SG Bode
8 heavy, 14 medium, 65 field
8 AA, 40 RL (one complete
Nebelwerfer regt) 13th Corps
(Total Eighth Army
covering Cassino-Liri
sector, 1,050)
Left sector, 14th Corps
71st Infantry Div.; 9 medium,
84 field (of which one group of
36 pieces was within easy
range of the 13th Corps assault
frontage) Corps Expéditionnaire
Français and
US 2nd Corps
(Total Fifth Army,
Liri to sea, 600)
Ungrouped and listed as “miscellaneous”
2 heavy and 54 AA
Kirkman’s private diary provides an illuminating account of how a corps commander spends his time before a great attack. His position is delicate, even ambiguous. He cannot, like an army commander, issue his orders, tour round the units to cheer up his troops and retire to his caravan to write letters or read books, leaving the details to his staff; resigned to the fact that he cannot usefully interfere until the battle reaches the crisis from which he hopes to pluck his victory. Divisional and brigade commanders are all busy with the minor tactics, techniques and mechanics of the battle they are about to fight and control from hour to hour. The corps commander has to ensure that all is going forward satisfactorily and that his divisional commanders are in his mind and can anticipate his moves, but without nagging them or “breathing down their necks”; too close control may only serve to irritate or be interpreted as lack of confidence. The corps commander’s position is very like that of the managing director of a firm. He is the executive who realises the army commander’s aim and plan. He is personally responsible for the conduct of the battle. The detailed plan is his. The army artillery fire-plan, the mission given to the army engineers and the priorities given to the tactical air force have all been adjusted to meet his requirements.
Kirkman was a rather dry, strong-minded highly capable officer from Montgomery’s stable. He was an artilleryman specially selected by Montgomery to organise the fire-plan at Alamein and later successfully commanded the 50th (Northumbrian) Division in Sicily. On May 7 he attended the Sunday service in his HQ, reading the lesson he himself had chosen from Deuteronomy, Chapter 9: “Hear, O Israel: thou art to pass over Jordan this day …” the stern warning given by Moses to the backsliding Hebrews that the Lord alone conferred victory in battle, not because they deserved it but because He wished to exalt the righteous and subdue the wicked. (British generals were churchgoers without any undue piety — which was bad form — but all had been well grounded in the Authorised Version of the Bible at their public schools, predominantly Anglican foundations.) Then he went off to watch some “first class training” in river crossing by the 1st Battalion of the 6th Surreys on the Volturno river. On the 10th he visited all his divisional commanders to make sure that they understood exactly how he intended the 13th Corps offensive to develop once they had established a bridgehead on the far bank. British higher commanders attached far more importance to establishing this rapport than to the issue of detailed orders handed down to be rigidly obeyed, a system they had tried and found wanting in the First World War.
To “Pasha” Russell, 8th Indian Division, Kirkman explained that if his initial attack went well he was to take every risk and try to rush the Hitler Line, which he correctly believed to be virtually unmanned until the Gustav Line garrisons could fall back and occupy it. His orders to Dudley Ward, 4th Division, attacking on the right, were that once he had firmly established his bridgehead he was to wheel right, isolate Cassino and the Monastery from reinforcements and join hands with the Poles. Charles Keightley was to have one brigade of his 78th Division ready to cross from the 12th onwards, and he hoped later to insert his whole division between Russell and Ward with the Via Casilina as his centre line. He, too, was to go as fast as possible and try to “bounce” the Hitler Line. Once the 78th Division was fairly on its way, he told Ward, and Evelegh (whose division was split between supporting Ward and keeping the parachutists in Cassino in play) that he hoped to withdraw both their divisions into corps reserve ready for exploitation.
At midday on the 11th Kirkman assembled the whole staff of HQ 13th Corps and explained all this to them, so they could understand exactly what he intended and be able to anticipate his requirements by forward planning. In the evening he drove up the Via Casilina towards the river, noting with satisfaction that all the troops and vehicles seemed very well concealed, but later was made rather anxious by the noise the tanks and engineer vehicles made moving down to their assembly positions after dark. The day’s entry ended with the weather forecast — “fine and dry” — and the reflection that though all river crossings in the face of a determined enemy were hazardous operations “the chances of success were greatly in our favour” and that he doubted whether “the Bosh [sic] had any idea of what was coming to him”. There he was right, but then, nor did his troops, who were to be upset by a hazard from an unexpected quarter. Kirkman’s opening sentence of the entry for D-day plus one reads, “We got across all right, but nevertheless a
rather disappointing night and day.” That was exactly the case, no more, no less. If that once-vaunted British characteristic, phlegm, is a prime requisite in a general, “Kirkie” had it in full. So did Leese, Alexander, Clark and Juin. They needed it, for 13th Corps attack had started as badly as Juin and Clark had predicted, it was firmly lodged on the far bank and so far had defied any attempt by the Germans to throw it back in the river, while the Poles, the French and the Americans had all completely failed in a dismal and costly fashion.
One of the traps into which a military historian can fall is that by trying to convey to his reader a clear and coherent account of what is invariably a confused and complex tissue of events he can fail to convey the true nature of combat. It is only too easy with hindsight to look down on the battlefield as if it were a chess-board, and the errors and lost opportunities revealed by the historical record, whereas in reality the impression of even a successful battle on the fighting soldier is one of a ghastly, bloody muddle. As for the commanders, they are more often than not blinded by the “fog of war”, which at 11 p.m. on May 11 was not metaphorical at all, but literal – and thick. The night had started fine, the sky clear and star-lit, the early darkness turned into day by cones of searchlights providing “artificial moonlight”. All that had remained was for the gun-position officers to make their last calculations to adjust the sight-settings in the gun-programmes in light of the latest details of wind and weather, and with the single order “Fire!” unleash the first of Frank Siggers’ thunderclaps on the enemy batteries, while at the same moment the infantry and the engineers began their march from their concealed assembly areas down to the near bank of the river. Nature then defeated the meteorologists and the staff alike. The Garigliano valley was always subject to mist, though not usually as late as May, but when on that night it suddenly began to form, it was thickened by the smoke of the hundreds of bursting shells – British and German; mist turning into dense fog as Colonel Wilkinson and his anti-aircraft gunners began to ignite their smoke generators in good time to produce a satisfactory screen of the whole battlefield by dawn.
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